Well, you can’t complain that this website doesn’t have a variety of topics, and that’s for sure!

One day its “punishing Scumbags”, the next it’s about weird optical illusions!

When I look back over all the Jesus Budda postings, I see a pattern of randomness that reflects the JB ‘personality’.

God knows what weird crap could be discussed here in the usual logical, rational and balanced manner!

I love optical illusions.

As Doctor Hibbert in The Simpsons would say: “is that the love between a man and a woman or the love of a fine cigar?”

Well, it’s not quite the ‘love between a man and a woman’ kinda love but it is a definite fondness. I could never ‘get’ those Magic Eye pictures.

I just couldn’t make out what I was ‘supposed’ to see. Maybe I tried to hard to ‘see’ and didn’t relax and let my mind wander. But whatever the reason, I just couldn’t make out what those Magic Eye images contained.

A bit like looking at a “Where’s Wally?” book and never finding the little scoundrel.

Scoundrel?

Wally’s not a scoundrel.

Why’d I call him a scoundrel?

Who cares?

Now I’m getting sidetracked…

I love M C Escher stuff, Bridget Riley’s swirly paintings and those images where if you look at them one way you see a beautiful woman and another way you see an old witch.

Great stuff! What’s not to like?

I love the way they – especially the M C Esher stuff – make you completely rethink the way you ‘see’ things.

All to often we take what we see for granted. We label things as objects and they loose their wonder and interest: such as, a chair is ‘just’ a chair or a tree is a tree.

But when confronted with something we can’t put a label on, we (and by ‘we’, I’m talking about me and presuming that you too have had the same sort of experience) suddenly experience that wonder again.

That’s a great feeling!

It’s like being a little kid again and seeing stuff you’ve never seen before.

It’s incredible how we take what we see for granted.

Suddenly, when confronted by a simple two-dimensional image that doesn’t correspond to what were used to we automatically consider it ‘wrong’ and try to ‘solve’ the conundrum by comparing it to other images we’ve seen and our own interpretation of what is ‘correct’.

Like those famous black and white ‘Vase’ images, we attempt to visualize both the vase and the silhouetted faces at the same time but our poor, little brains just can’t do this! And it’s this failure to logically comprehend something that bizarrely gives us enjoyment.

It’s almost like we enjoy being confused and ‘tricked’ in this way.

I’ve heard that if you paint horizontal white lines on the road in front of a gateway to a field, cows won’t cross it.

Apparently this confuses the cattle’s sense of perspective as the optical illusion of depth is created by the strong dark and light horizontal patterns: they believe that there is a pit below that they may fall into!

I wonder if cows would enjoy some of these optical illusions? They probably would!

Lets take a look at some of these wonders, shall we?

Follow me, my dear friends…

Which line is the longest?

M C Escher – the master of the visual illusion. And a lovely man in his day, I’m sure!

Imagine how freaky his house must have been.

Imagine trying to find the bathroom?

I love these!

And this one too. Messes with your head….

Thats a good one.

And heres a version of a very famous isometric optical illusion image.

Lovely.

Heres a link to a site of cool optical illusions if anyone is interested.

www.newopticalillusions.com